90 Second Interview with Paul Afshar

Malisha Patel, Manager and Financial Services lead at tml Partners, sat down with Paul Afshar, acting CMO at Osome, to get his thoughts on career development, influential leadership and marketing trends producing opportunities and challenges for communications leaders.

Who is your business hero and why?

I find Michael Burry really impressive. You’ll know him best from his character in The Big Short played by Christian Bale. He, along with others like Ray Dalio, predicted the housing market crash in 2008 and both exemplify two qualities I admire: listening to the story the data is telling you, and having the courage to say the unpopular thing when you know it’s right.

What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

Two pieces of advice on decision making. One: you’ll sometimes have to make decisions without the necessary data or insights you need to make the decision. Two: Never make a decision emotionally. Even if it feels right or good. The second helps with the first, but the first is tough and I’ve learned that relying on a framework and past experience is the best way to make a decision without the full facts at hand (which happens often in leadership positions). 

What has had the most influential impact on your leadership skills and why?

A few years back I did some work with the CEO of one of the largest food companies in the US. I asked him how he navigated keeping the company’s 200,000 employees on the same track. His perspective was simple: surround yourself with people who are good at the things you’re not and realise that your job as a leader is to help them work together. He complemented this with an insight from ‘​​Five Dysfunctions of a Team’ by Patrick Lencioni – your team is the other leaders you work with, not the people that report to you.

What future trends do you think marketing and communications will see in your sector over the next five years?

Data automation through AI. I spend a significant amount of time daily interrogating data from multiple sources, and a lot of it is still quite manual. AI-powered tools like Tableau or Polymer streamline data analysis, save hours, but also allow you to use multiple filters to get insights which would have taken complex programming. Imagine being able to instantly understand how website CTA button changes impact revenue from a particular customer cohort on a particular channel.

What has fundamentally changed about your industry since you started working in it?

The role and rise of the user influencer is such an important but not well-understood part of the marketing mix. A proven way to build trust is through potential “users” talking about use cases on their social platforms and developing your users into influencers. We’ve done this at Osome where influencer users now make up 30-40% of our first revenue in the UK.

What do you consider to be the biggest challenges for marketing & communications leaders?

I’ve never been a big fan of the distinction between “brand marketeers” and “performance marketeers”. There’s too much left-brain and right-brain dichotomy and I don’t think it’s helpful. To use an example, the success of a Google dynamic search or display ad campaign is as influenced by messaging, imagery and experimentation as it is by target CPA and audience settings. You need both the left and the right brain to make good marketing decisions.

If you could go back 10 years, what career advice would you give yourself?

I spent 5 years working for one of the world’s largest marketing agencies, and the thing it taught me was that I much prefer building companies rather than just advising them. 

Who are tml Partners?

tml Partners are Marketing and Corporate Affairs recruitment specialists with access to a global network of Fintech and wider Finance leaders.

Our Financial Services practice work across senior marketing and communications roles on a permanent or interim basis.

To learn how tml Partners can help you, get in touch with Malisha Patel: